Perle Systems Case Study
France Telecom enables remote administration
of its vast server network
With many locations, France Telecom
had over a thousand servers distributed throughout the country running
various applications and operating systems. In a quest to improve
quality of service, as well as reduce maintenance and travel requirements,
the telecommunications leader looked to Console Servers from
Perle to enable remote administration of its server network.
The move to consolidation
As one of the world's leading telecommunications operators,
France Telecom has multiple sites where various internal applications
- such as administration, management, finance and billing – are managed
for a broad range of clients and services. These applications are hosted
on over a thousand servers using different operating systems, including
UNIX (AIX, HP-UX, Solaris and Linux) and Windows, which are managed
by a network of administrators spread throughout the territory.
 As administration requirements continued to increase
in complexity and scope, France Telecom's DPS (Service Platforms Department
) decided to find a means to improve the quality of service and management
of its disparate base of servers. A project called RealSup was established
with the mandate to consolidate the management of servers located at
nine main sites: Lille, Toulouse, Nantes, Lyon, Strasbourg, Nanterre,
Savigny-sur-Orge, Aubervilliers and Montsouris. This required a cost-effective
connectivity solution that would allow France Telecom administrators
controlled access to assigned servers, regardless of the operating
system or network status.
Following a needs analysis, France Telecom selected the
48-port version of the Perle CS9000 Console Servers as the ideal solution
to suit their requirements. Their critical criteria included:
- the ability to limit administrators' access to specifically
assigned servers
- simultaneous telnet access to 48 servers
- the ability
to program repetitive tasks to improve productivity
- remote dial-in
capabilities to simultaneously access all servers in the event of
network interruption or failure
- a rack mountable, rugged design
for easy installation in the IT centers
- Sun ‘Solaris' Safe - no
"break signal" sent during power cycle causing costly server re-boots
or downtime
- advanced encryption and recording features to achieve
powerful security, filtering and tracing functions during data transfer
With the installation of the Console Servers, France Telecom
can now remotely administer and maintain its entire base of geographically
distributed servers and assure maximum availability.
By working with Perle, France Telecom was able to effectively
consolidate resources, reduce travel time and improve efficiency for
administrators. This could all be achieved while improving overall
security and redundancy of its server network.
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